by Steve Low
The book lay open before me. The message it conveyed however, was lost on the reader. My eyes, though directed at the text, were unfocused. I fidgeted about, rocking back and forth, as if in pain. It seemed every few minutes, I would look up at the library clock, to check the progress of time. With each glance, I was doomed to disappointment. Time was virtually standing still. Eight-thirty was unobtainable.
When the time time finally arrived there was a sense of relief,I got up. I left the books open on the desk, as though I had just gone to the bathroom. Out on the footpath it was cold. A southerly wind darted up between the buildings, whistling in the overhead wires. I huddled deeper into my navy coat. A Honda Civic flashed its lights and jerked to a halt. A door flew open. I dived in, pulling the door behind me. I flung myself about her neck as she manoeuvred the gear stick, soaking up the scent and the feel of her smooth of hair. I thought about what Melanie had revealed to me, earlier that day – that she had shared their secret with a friend. “I can totally trust Beth,” she had argued, after I had questioned the wisdom of the disclosure. She was struggling to understand her compulsion to be with me, when morally it was considered so wrong. She needed a confidant.
“Better get your belt on now,” she said. “We don’t need any attention from the cops.”
I scanned the pavement for any signs of life. The traffic department was the least of our worries. It was spies of a different breed I was worried about - doctors, nurses, friends, relatives or acquaintances – someone who would gape in astonishment upon seeing us together. Especially someone named Eleanor or Rikki.
We pulled up beside a cream weatherboard bungalow. An outside light illuminated a corner of the house. We had another go at our usual discussion about guilt.
“Obviously I feel guilty,” Melanie said, lowering her voice, as the engine went idle. “But you must have reasons why you are doing this, just as I have reasons.” She leaned back against her seat and looked at the roof. “I don’t know your wife at all, apart from what I saw at the dinner party. I’m sure she’s very nice. But you do seem quite different - at least in that setting.”
“We’re poles apart,” I said, relieved at the attempt to be understood. I delivered my history in a compressed discourse. I wanted her to know about the early obsession with the way Eleanor looked. And the rejection that further fueled the obsession. I needed her to understand the romanticism of the young marriage – the possession obsession. And after that – the twin problems of not relating to the same people and of vastly different commitments to the giving of love.
Soon we had to leave the conversation in the car. I followed her inside to meet her friend Beth again. Beth seemed to be a person who was always positive – always in balance. She was also very much into the physical aspects of life. For the first half hour, she had wandered about in her running gear. Her upper body, the parts I had seen outside her singlet, rippled with definition. And below there were powerful looking quads and hamstrings. Every few minutes, she’d stop involuntarily and stretch a different muscle group. However, she plied us both with champagne, and I noticed her own intake was considerable. She was not a complete health freak obviously. She treated Melanie and I as though they were a well seasoned couple. Despite this, I felt very uncomfortable. It was a weird feeling to be abruptly in the lives of the two women.
Like any good athlete, Beth spent half her life in the shower. That day was no exception and soon Beth and I were alone in the kitchen . . . But not for long. A male voice materialised from behind us.
“Nice to see you still know how to enjoy yourself Melanie,” it said. We broke apart. The newcomer was in his late thirties, tall and broad with a flat friendly face He smiled at us benignly.
“Oh it’s you Larry,” Melanie said. “God you gave me a fright. Melanie and Larry conversed easily. Having no history with either of them, nor with Beth, I was sidelined as a passive observer of their conviviality. Larry unearthed a bottle of peach schnapps and liberally topped up their champagne glasses. I managed to discern that he was an ex boyfriend of Beth’s and that they were clearly still close friends. Larry worked occasionally on the till of the Robbie Burns bottle store. In addition to that he had a milk run. “It can be bloody stressful,” he explained. Some people forget to put out their tokens. Then there’s dogs. There’s always some mangy mutt snapping, at your heels. I keep a handful of rocks in my back pocket, to hurl at the bastards. There are so many hopeless dog owners about.”
“God, don’t get him started on dogs,” Beth announced, coming back into the room. She had on a slip of a skirt and a sleeveless white top. He was started on dogs however. He regaled a story about a five year battle he’d had with the owner of a barking dog. The dog had irritated him night after night many years before.
“I used to ring this dick virtually every night. He did absolutely nothing to silence down the mongrel. In the end I didn’t bother talking to him. I just phoned him every time his dog barked and barked down the phone myself – woof, woof. Then I’d hang up”
I slipped down in my easy chair. I gazed at the roof, as the champagne lifted me nicely into the therapeutic window. A warm glow began pulsing in my dermis. The voices trickled on in desultory fashion – mildly accusatory, tinged with irony, but easy and familiar. I only joined in sporadically. The strangeness of being with the new people passed off. It was different to Remington and Arnold’s abrupt and naked cynicism. And certainly different to Eleanor’s measured delivery. I became aware of Melanie being close, her body moulded in beside mine, on the chair. I pulled her in closer. I was good at giving and receiving affection. I didn’t have anything to learn about that.
“Let’s leave them for a while Larry,” he overheard Beth say seemingly from afar. “Come and tell me how the milk run has gone this week.” Their voices ebbed away, to a distant recess of the house.
The madness continued a few days later. I thought it a crazy idea – to go out to a restaurant – the four of us? Larry, however stuck to his guns. If someone they knew saw them, well so what? I could be an acquaintance of Larry’s. There wasn’t necessarily an implied link to Melanie. We chose a midweek night. I had my usual alibi of studying in the medical library.
“Gerry’s got himself a watertight excuse,” Larry said, as I climbed into the station wagon. “What’s yours Melanie?”
“I’m out to dinner with Beth,” She said, entwining fingers with me across the back seat.
“Hey, of course, why piss around with elaborate stories. Just tell the truth.” Larry swung onto the one-way system.
“I’m often out to dinner with Beth - and yeah, it’s often at Palms Cafe.”
Outside the restaurant Melanie leaned across me and tried to peer inside. The ground floor of a 1930’s commercial building, the cafe was triangular shaped. The roadside facade was mainly glass. But reflections of the street lights obscured the interior. “It’s too difficult to see. Let’s just go in.” The entrance led immediately into the kitchen area, separated from the entrance foyer by an L-shaped bench top. The chef, ponytail and beard, poked at the fryer. The stocky greying matriarch ushered us to a circular table, by an imposing window. Headlights of on-coming cars travelling on the one-way system, beamed straight in at us. At the last second, the cars veered away around the side of the building.
“If we get a car through the window, you can inherit the milk run Beth,” Larry said.
“No thanks. I think we’ll all be wiped out anyway.”
“Think I’ll have the baked camembert,” Melanie said, scrutinising the menu.“I have it every time.
“You’ve lost weight Melanie. Why are you losing weight?” Larry asked, leaning forward in his chair.
“Well, why do you think dumbo? Don’t you think she might be a bit stressed?” Beth looked up to the heavens.
“Okay, Okay. Not everyone stops eating when they’re stressed. Some people really binge out.”
“I’ll go and get ithe wine.” Beth said. “Marion’s probably busy. Staff are a bit thin
on the ground here.” Beth got up and squeezed past Larry.
“Get two bottles,” Melanie said, waving an empty wine glass.
Marion came and took our orders, straightening her apron, with the flat of a hand. From wall mounted speakers, music trickled, blending into the rising sound of voices.
“Stormy Monday,” Larry crowed, losing half his wine.
“You like this one?” Marion asked, her plump bland face devoid of expression.
“She’s almost Parkinsonian,” I said when she’d gone.
“Who? . . . What?” Larry shook his head.
The wine, the conversation and the music, washed into me like an intravenous purge. No longer aware of any risk, I wallowed in the gregarious company. By the time the main-course had appeared, and each had sampled the other’s fare, I was properly soused. The room started spinning and I lost control of my wine glass. The red distillation flooded the table top – the white linen becoming stained with crimson.
Marion appeared, “I’ll change that if you like,” she said, her mouth a straight line.
“You can’t take a doctor anywhere,” Larry said.
“So it would appear,” Marion said, clearing away the empty bottles. “I’ll order you a taxi,” Marion stated and we got up and went to the counter to pay up.
“Hey, we’ll get him to take us to the beach,” Larry said. “Let’s go for a swim.
Get the gear off.”
The taxi purred out through South Dunedin, to the seaside. Melanie leaned forward and read the license certificate attached to the inside of the windscreen. “Hey there Rob,” she said. “How about stopping here at the store, so I can get a packet of fags” We watched her enter the late night dairy. We could see her figure through a window, pointing up at the rows of cigarette packets.
“Imagine what old Rikki would think about that?” Larry mused.
“Mm . . . Well I think he’d be more concerned about something else,” Beth said,
Slumped on the back seat, I probably appeared to be asleep.
At the coast, we dismissed the driver and sat on the sea wall smoking. The sea rolled in and out, white foam on a wobbling black jelly. There was no wind. Behind us, anonymous tenancies cast angular shards of light across the road.
“I only smoke when I’ve had quite a few drinks,” Melanie said. “I just get this uncontrollable urge.”
“Better get it over with Larry,” Beth said, pointing to the surf. We descended precipitous steps, down the face of the sea wall. A pile of clothes mounted up on the encrusted rocks. The others flesh looked chalky in the dim illumination. Larry led the charge, war-whooping as he sprinted across the sand. I followed the two girls, watching their white bottoms bouncing as they ran. I plunged into the icy breakers. Under water it was black, freezing and deathly. The tide grabbed at me as it retreated back down the slope. Flashes of light, lanced the surface, as I broke through from below.
“It’s incredibly cold,” I said.
“Let’s beat it,” Beth said.
With no towels, we dressed uncomfortably, underclothes adhering to wet skin. The taxi reappeared and we piled in, puffing and blowing in the cold. Outside my flat we lingered in soft conversation.
“It’s half past one,” Larry said
“What will you say Gerry?” Beth asked..
“Ah . . . Yeah . . . I don’t know. I’ll think of something,” I muttered.
The door slammed and they were gone. The engine faded away abruptly, as the car dived off around a bend. Above me, my flat was dark and silent. But I smiled at the night and climbed the steps. I was really living.
In the weekend it was impossible to see Melanie. I accompanied Eleanor in an outing to Tunnel beach. She was driving and I lay slumped in the passenger seat. In my head Melanie’s words of an encounter the previous day replayed. ‘I’m worried about all this. The fallout would be enormous if we got caught – around the hospital – our families – our friends. I’d rather our marriages dissolved for their own reasons, rather than as a consequence of this.’
The car crested the hill. The Pacific Ocean, grey, miasmic, turbulent with white caps, opened out before us. The road descended steeply, ending at a wire fence line. Tufts of grass were flayed by the wind. Outside the car, we could barely hear each other talk above the roar of the sea. It was grinding into the cliffs hundreds of feet below. Eleanor led the way, climbing over a rickety stile to clear the barbed wire. The wind tore at her yellow jacket, threatening to uplift her slight frame entirely. A clay track wound steeply downward, towards some terminal bluffs. It skirted across their tops, before finding a natural tunnel that led right to the seabed itself. She walked hands in pockets, face impassive, held up to the wind. At the end of the tunnel, steps led out onto a massive rock that was judiciously by a guard-rail. The wild sea, tore at the rock, sending exploded foam into the air. It was too dangerous to venture out to the guard-rail. We remained at the tunnel entrance. She came and rested up against me. I put my arms loosely around her. I sniffed the top of her head. It felt strange holding her. But I still loved her. It was just that . . . I couldn’t bear the way we had to live
We crossed back over the stile and immediately the background roar was cut by the curvature of the hilltop. Eleanor stopped and waited. Her face was a deep pink. Strands of hair, stuck to her temples where sweat lay. I linked my arm through hers. If she knew where my mind lay! She would be floored. One day soon it might come. My stomach shrank, imploding at the prospect. I looked westward, across the rolling fields to the horizon. The far away images yielded nothing tangible. Only that old feeling of displacement.
Monday came and I went to retrieve a head injured patient from Alexandra. I thought about Boatwood’s grandiose experiments. That type of thing was in the outreaches of my mind normally. Rather, my inner retreat, was consumed by aesthetic dreams - music and love. Out the back windows of the ambulance, the winding road receded rapidly. The white line whipped about, like a kite in a gale. The grey bitumen, was framed by lazy hillsides and ragged bush. The ambulance began to slow down. It pulled over and stopped.
“Single gunshot wound to the head,” the Alexandra paramedic said. “Twenty-two rifle - suicide attempt. His wife and a friend heard the shot. He’d gone out to the milking shed. No obvious reason. The farm was doing well. Good marriage too, the friend said.”
As the ambulance began the return journey, I wrestled with the encircling head bandage, elevating it to reveal the forehead. As I did so, a geyser of red blood climbed into the air from the pinpoint wound in the middle of the forehead. “Oh Christ,” I said, tugging the dressing back down to stem the flow. No brain was going to survive that amount of pressure. No wonder his pupils were fixed and dilated.
On arrival at the Barn, we hooked the patient to a ventilator. Blood not contained by the dressings seeped down the face in a continuous trickle. Boatwood was of a mind to let the brain dead man slip away. He elected not to replace the blood loss.
Gibbs who was taking an interest, was outraged. “You should be replacing the blood and I’d put a tourniquet around his neck to compress the carotids. We should harvest his kidneys for organ donation.”
Boatwood looked down at Gibbs and laughed. “What’s his wife going to say, when she sees her dying husband with a noose around his neck and his face going black?”
“It could be your son receiving those kidneys,” Gibbs said. “Think about it.” He transfixed Boatwood with an unblinking gaze.
“No you think about it Trevor,” Boatwood said, frowning and raising his voice. “You should show some sensitivity for once. The patients aren’t just a physiologic preparation for you to experiment with. Put a tourniquet round his neck – what an outrage. It’s certainly not happening on my unit. You can be sure of that.” He strode off at once. I followed him to the tearoom. Inside, Boatwood filled a white electric jug, from a hot water cylinder. He looked at me, raising an eyebrow. “Tea?” he asked. I was amazed at how unperturbed Boatwood appeared to be
. Boatwood laughed as if perceiving my thoughts. “Trevor’s prone to take the contrary view. Sometimes it’s quite ridiculous, as you can see.”
Niall appeared, willowy and looking pleased with himself. “Those results the other day – are they significant Prof?”
I grimaced. Niall knew damned well that the results were significant. It was yet another case of student-professor colonic hoovering.
“The statistics are very good,” Boatwood said. “There’s no doubt. The hyperPEEP really improved lung function. I’ll have them on their feet in Sydney. I’m presenting the data over there at the scientific meeting, in a few weeks.”
“It makes you wonder what went wrong the first time,” I said, tipping coffee granules into three mugs.
“Tea for me,” Boatwood said. “Yes, well clearly something happened while those pigs were unsupervised. I wouldn’t risk it that way again.”
“What do you think happened?” Niall asked.
Boatwood’s eyes shifted about. He scratched the back of his head. “One can only hazard a guess,” he said, tugging at his beard. “Maybe there was a power surge, which made the ventilators deliver a large wave of inspiratory pressure.”
“Causing the lungs to rupture,” Niall added helpfully.
I poured hot water over Boatwood’s teabag. “Surely the ventilators are able to cope with that. They’ve got a pressure release valve at 60 cmH2O.”
“No, no, no,” Boatwood said, frowning. “They were removed. The PEEP’s already at 70. There’s no way we can have pressure release at 60.”
I covered my face with my hands. Then I said, “What about someone tampering with the ventilators?”
“Eh?” Boatwood’s eyebrows descended, his pupils black. “I don’t know what the mechanism was. A pressure wave, or something of that nature occurred. This isn’t Chicago, we’re in Dunedin.”
Niall interrupted, his long fingers splayed around his coffee mug. “Tony Drummond turned up at the lab, while I was doing my shift the other night. It was about two o’clock in the morning. He had keys for the door. He looked bloody surprised to see me there.”
“He helps with most of the research. He’s in the lab, all the time.” Boatwood said.
“At two in the morning?” I said, my voice rising.
“He’d had a few to drink,” Niall said. “He’d come to collect something.”
“He runs the lab for us. Why shouldn’t he turn up? Anyway, I’ve got the results I want. Whatever happened is irrelevant now.”
I was going to ask why we could simply ignore the results of the first study but Gibb’s stunted figure appeared in the door frame. “Your patient in bed four is going off a bit. His oxygen saturation is falling.”
“Lung oedema again,” Boatwood said, putting down his cup. “That’s Mr Hart. He was hypotensive for quite a while in theatre.”
“He had a big transfusion,” I said. “David Ngai gave him sixteen units of blood.”
“That’s the second nephrectomy that has been cocked up this year,” Gibbs said.
“The vena cava was wrapped in tumour. It’s not a cock up. There’s bound to be a large bleed out in that situation.” Boatwood finally was sounding irritated.
“Well I’m glad I don’t have a renal cell carcinoma,” Gibbs said as a parting shot.
“Better put some PEEP on Mr Hart then Gerry,” Boatwood said.
Later when I left the ICU on an errand, I noticed Gibbs and Drummond conversing in the corridor of the adjacent anaesthetic department. Gibbs was gesticulating with one arm. They both looked up simultaneously when I appeared. Gibbs frowned, while Drummond stared through me, his face inscrutable. I entered the lift well and escaped from their gaze. I felt sure that they’d be talking about HyperPEEP and it’s stalwart, Professor Boatwood. Perhaps in their minds I was tarred by the same brush – guilty by association.
Chapter 7
